Don't Buy Housing Bubble Propaganda

In writing it, I decided to forget everything I thought I knew, and look at housing from scratch. Consider the factors that make Real Estate very different than stocks. Lose the assumptions, check out the numbers driving Real Estate, and see if Housing is truly the bubble everyone claims it to be.

Turns out there's much less of a bubble than commonly believed by many people believe. While anecdotal evidence of regional excesses are interesting,
they doesn't mean we are about to see home prices get cut in half (or
worse) over the next few years.

There are three key drivers hardly discussed by pundits opining on the U.S. housing market "bubble":

1) Purchase prices don't matter to buyers -- monthly payments do;2) US has the fastest growing population of industrialized nations;3) "Only 3% of all buyers sell their home in a year or less," a survey found.

These issues, taken together, suggest that while Real Estate may be an extended asset class (i.e., two standard price deviations above historical trend) that doesn't maeke it a bubble.

Of course, its interesting to note that a Playboy bunny gave up her
modeling career to go into real estate speculation (mentioned
previously here),
it doesn't mean the end is nigh.

• There are three different drivers of housing
prices, which separate them from stocks.

• The biggest risk to the housing market is a
significant decrease in national employment.

The old saw is true:
Every general fights the previous battle. And after missing the tech and
telecom bubbles, the generals of the financial media are now battling more
bubbles than we can count:

There are bubbles in debt, credit and interest rates. There is the oil bubble, the import bubble, the China bubble and the current account deficit bubble. In short, we have a veritable bubble in bubbles. Indeed, it is astonishing how many people who failed to either acknowledge the tech bubble in the 90s -- or at least failed to act on it -- now have no hesitation to declare real estate to be a bubble. This despite their lack of expertise or past track record in spotting bubbles on a timely fashion.

The
bubble du jour though is the housing bubble. From Greenspan's testimony to
CNBC's Housing special to (uh-oh) this month's Fortune magazine cover, it seems
to be all anyone wants to talk about.

My
position is that housing is not in a bubble -- yet. But it is an increasingly
extended asset class that may be subject to a significant correction in the
future. But a 25%-35% retracement is a very different situation than a bubble
(recall that the Nasdaq dropped 80%), primarily because there are very
different consequences for both homeowners and investors.

Not
Your Grandson's Bubble

That
said, comparing real estate with other true bubbles -- most especially the
tech/telecom/dotcom bubble of the 1990s -- is imperfect, due to several
factors.

Homes
are illiquid assets that take several months to sell; stock can be liquidated
instantly.

The
housing market is regional, with an uneven distribution of asset appreciation:
Equities are national, and even global.

Lastly,
there is an intrinsic value of a house as a place where you can live; Compare
this with a company whose only asset was a sock puppet -- the tulip bulb of its
day -- and it's clear why a profitless, assetless, publicly traded company can
go to zero. Barring an external disaster like Love Canal,
houses will not.

When
we compare what the key drivers are for price appreciation between these two
asset classes, other crucial differences appear.

What
Drives Housing Prices

We
can look at three key drivers for equity price appreciation over different time
lines: Longer term, it's a function of earnings. Higher profits support greater
prices at historical P/E ratios. Multiple expansion and contraction occurs as a
function of our next two drivers. Intermediately, macroeconomic conditions (aka
the business cycle) drive the entire market. I expect the cycle, which began
post-2001 recession, to end in early 2006. If that's correct, then prices will
retreat as revenue and earnings slow. Over the short term, sentiment --
especially when it gets to extremes -- is a key mover.

Housing
is driven by very different factors. First and foremost are mortgage rates.
Something I have yet to hear the pundits opine on is that most home buyers
don't care what they pay for a house. That's right, you read that correctly --
purchase price doesn't matter. What they do care about is the monthly
carrying costs. For the vast majority of home purchasers, the biggest variable
in that will be their mortgage rates.

The
first house I owned had a $300,000 mortgage. Back when interest rates were near
10%, the monthly payment would equal $2,632.71. If a buyer today were to
finance the purchase of that home for $500,000, at a 6% mortgage (and you can
get lower rates today), the monthly payment is $2,997.75. That house
appreciated 67%, yet the mortgage payments went up only 14%. This helps
demonstrate why a big drop in mortgage rates drives prices much, much higher.
And that's not counting the buyers who made larger than 10% down payments via
the accumulated equity from the sale of their prior homes. (See this
mortgage calculator to run your own numbers.)

The
second factor is demographic trends. Here's a little-known fact: The U.S. has
the fastest population-growth rate of any industrialized nation. According to
NPG, the U.S.
average fertility rate is currently 2.1335 births per woman -- the highest
fertility rate since 1971. For comparison, the U.K.'s
fertility rate is 1.7, Canada's
1.4 and Germany's
1.3. If this rate is maintained, the U.S. population will double every
35 years.

Further,
the kids of the baby boomers -- the echo generation -- are now at home-buying
age. Thanks to the intergenerational wealth transfers, they can buy bigger and
more expensive homes than their parents could at the same age. Their purchases
also have been impacting the housing market. (Some analysts believe that the
life cycle of the boomers has been a key driver in equities also -- so on this
point, there may be some parallels between the two asset classes.)

Take
this organic increase in U.S.
population, add to it a healthy supply of legal immigration, and that's a
formula for a rising demand for housing. And, there are no warehouses stocked
with homes awaiting more births and naturalized citizens.

Muy
Caliente

Furthermore,
the hottest price appreciation in real estate is directly correlated with
population shifts within the U.S.: Las Vegas and South Florida
are growing at two to three times the national rate, so it's no surprise that
their home prices have been appreciating rapidly.

The
third driver is speculation. In many regions, speculative activity has risen
dramatically. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that speculative
purchases in 2004 had risen to 23%, from 16% the prior year.

However,
if we define speculation as flipping a home within one year, that number drops
dramatically. According to an NAR survey, "only 3% of all home buyers sell
their home in a year or less." That is not exactly the picture of excess
speculation.

Even
if you use the 23% number, compare that with the speculative foment we saw in
1999. I would surmise that somewhere north of 80% of all stock purchases and
trading were purely speculative in nature. If these two asset classes are each
bubbles, then they are very, very different kinds of bubbles, hardly comparable
to each other.

The
last, and in my opinion, potentially most damaging factor, is the employment
situation. As long as most people are gainfully employed, they will be able to
service their mortgage costs. (For those of you who are buying a home you can
barely afford, then let me suggest buying mortgage insurance -- just in case
your main income source falters).

The
biggest risk to the housing market is not just rising interest rates -- rather,
it's a significant decrease in national employment. Why? It's not the leverage,
but the ability to service the debt that causes problems. A potentially
negative scenario is the Fed tightens too far, inducing a recession.
Something else goes wrong - theoretically, China stops buying our Treasuries,
and that forces the Fed to become a buyer of last resort (think Bernanke's
printing press). Next thing you know, we have hyperinflation, large-scale
unemployment, and a housing market off 50%.

While
I don't believe this is a likely scenario, it certainly is within the realm of
possibility, and it's one of the few ways I can foresee a major drop in home
prices.

The
most recent asset bubble saw prices drop 80% from peak to trough. That was the
Nasdaq from March 2000 to October 2002, and those losses are very comparable
with the Dow crash in 1929, or the Nikkei collapse in 1989.

How
likely is it that real estate will suffer from similar distressed sales in the U.S.? In
my opinion, not very. But real estate is an extended asset class, and it's
likely to come in -- eventually. After the 1987 crash, many of my peers rushed
out of equities (big mistake) and into New York real estate. Anything purchased between 1987-89
was underwater for the better part of the next decade. By the late '90s, they
were back to break even, and since then, it's been a strong move upwards

We
shouldn't be surprised if purchasers at present prices see a similar price
sequence over the next decade. As the rate cycle plays out, prices will slide.
I'm looking at a slow asset depreciation of 10%-30% over the next several years
as a realistic possibility.

Perhaps
2008 will be the next great entry into real estate -- assuming you are
insulated from rates (i.e., paying cash). After the next market washout -- my
work suggests 2006-07 will not be a period of equity outperformance -- I
can foresee a gradual economic strengthening in the 2010s, with a new bull
equity market beginning mid-decade (2012-15). Then the whole movie starts all
over again.

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» How Far Must Housing Prices Fall? from The Big Picture
Our original thesis back in May 2005 was that Home prices could retrace as much as 25%-35% from the peak to re-establish a normalized pricing. Now, a new study shows exactly how and why that might occur: Home Price to Rent Ratio: U.S. house prices like... [Read More]

Tracked on Jan 3, 2008 7:27:20 AM

Comments

good article,

some additional points I think are important,

Being that most homebuyers are highly levered 80%-100% LTV, especially investors, a decline of 30% would wipe out all equity and then some, potentially leading to foreclosure and personal bankruptcy. (All rentals units are owned by investors and there are many renters.)

Lack of liquidity in real estate is a double edged sword. It allows for bubles to perpetuate even when most people agree prices are inflated but are not willing to bear the disruption in their life to move to a rental or other commmunity.

It is extremely difficult to short the housing market and so unlike equities a bubble in homes can extend even beyond a bubble in equities.

measuring speculation by turnover (percentage of units sold within a year) is imperfect as speculators will hold while the trend continues. Another measure to include would be leverage, loan to value, percentage of ARM mortages.

When people say there is a bubble they are not neccesarily thinking an 80% decline. I never considered that. In my thinking a 30-40% decline is what those predicting a popping bubble are expecting.

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

The information on this site is provided for discussion purposes only, and are not investing recommendations. Under no circumstances does this information represent a recommendation to buy or sell securities.